delaide Fringe has announced Victorian comedian Elizabeth Davie as the recipient of this year’s Matt Tarrant Emerging Performers Grant, a year-long mentorship and cash sum of $2000 towards performing in the 2020 Adelaide Fringe. The grant was conceived by award-winning South Australian magician Matt Tarrant and is supported by the Adelaide Fringe Artist Fund, which began in 2014 and has since provided about $300,000 in funding to help independent Australian artists present a show in the Fringe. Davie, who has studied clowning, improvisation and performance with the likes of French master clown Phillippe Gaulier, will present her solo work Apex Predator at next year’s Fringe.
Both Martin-Chew and Wengert will utilise the John Oxley Library collection to research the visual history of Queensland’s Government Printing Office (QGPO). The Government Printing Office was responsible for publishing official documents and information (‘Details’), including Hansard, Parliamentary Papers, Annual Reports, Royal Commissions, Acts & Bills & Regulations & Statutes, Nautical charts and Tide Timetables, Electoral Maps (and hundreds of other types of maps), Survey Plans, Railway Timetables, and other regular and occasional publications. Many hundreds of people worked in the QGPO’s different sections—and the project aims to organise a visual history of the workplace, and the staff (‘Devils’). These workers include artists William Bustard, Lloyd Rees, and Peter Smith Templeton, among some.